I appreciate, most clearly of all, that my baby-brother became from that hour, in some sort, my especial property. The peculiar tenderness that has characterized our feeling for each other, the steadfast affection and perfect confidence in our mutual love that have known no variableness or shadow of turning, for all our united lives, may not have been rooted in the vigil of unutterable horror and unspeakable thankfulness. I look back upon it as a chrism. Later in the year, another incident that might have been a tragedy, stirred the even flow of domestic life. We had finished prayers and breakfast, and my father was half-way down the avenue on his way to the village when we saw him stop suddenly, retrace his steps hurriedly, enter the yard, and shout to the colored butler who was at the dining-room window. The man ran out and came back shortly, dragging Argus and Rigo into the hall with him, shutting the front door. My father was taking down his gun from the hooks on the wall of the hall, and, without a word, began to load it. One of the earliest of our nursery lessons was, “Never ask questions of busy people!” My mother set the example of obedience to this precept now by silence while her husband, with set lips and resolute eyes, rammed down a charge of buckshot into the barrel, and, saying, “Keep the children in the house!” ran down the steps and down the avenue at the top of his speed toward the big gate opening upon the village street a hundred yards away. From the front windows we now saw a crowd of men and boys, tramping down the middle of the highway, firing confusedly and flinging stones at a great yellow dog trotting ahead of them, and snapping right and left as he ran. Before my father reached the gate, the dog had turned sharply to the right down a cross-street skirting our lower grounds. A low fence and a ditch divided the meadow from the thoroughfare. My father kept on our side of the fence, raising his gun to cover the brute, which, as we could now see, was slavering and growling hoarsely. A cry arose from the crowd, and my mother groaned, as the dog, espying the man across the ditch, rushed down one side of it and up the other, to attack the new foe. My father held his hand until the dog was within a few feet of him, then fired with steady aim. The brute rolled over to the bottom of the ditch—dead. That evening we were allowed to walk down the field to see the slaughtered monster. That was what I named him to myself, and forthwith began a story in several chapters, with my father as the hero, and an astonishing number of beasts of prey as _dramatis personæ_, that lasted me for many a night thereafter. The title I had chosen was none too large for the dog as he lay, stark and still, his big head straight with his back, his teeth showing savagely in the open jaws. A trickle of water was dammed into a pool by his huge bulk.